SOMETHING ABOUT TOM CARPER

There is something about Tom Carper that some of his
opponents cannot stand.

Nobody else in Delaware politics has been as
persistently spattered by mudslinging as he has, but
never mind. He just wipes it away and keeps on going.

"Whatever I'm doing, it works. I get a big sympathy
vote," Carper quipped.

Carper will be on the ballot on Tuesday, Election
Day, for the 13th time, ready to set a record here for
statewide wins as a Democratic treasurer, congressman,
governor and now senator.

It has been 30 years since he last won by single
digits -- a spread of less than 10 percentage points
over his opponent -- and most recently he polled 67
percent for a second term in the Senate in 2006. Clearly
there are masses of voters who like him.

Still, for someone who works at coming across like
some Dudley Do-Right, the cartoon Canadian Mountie with
his square jaw, clean living and boundless energy, the
hits just keep on coming.

In other words, long before there was Alex Pires, the
minor party candidate, with his taunts and smears,
Carper had plenty of experience with it.

The worst was probably the first. It was so bad the
New York Post, a saucy tabloid certainly in the running
for the world's leading authority on the gutter, called
it "the nation's dirtiest campaign."

In that one, back in 1982, Carper leaped hours before
the filing deadline into a race against Tom Evans, the
Republican congressman who was being romantically linked
to a lobbyist, only to be accused himself of hitting his
wife.

It was all far beyond the normal bounds of Delaware
politics. In a Democratic year, Carper won.

The aftereffects gradually wore away. Carper and
Evans are friends today. Evans' marriage healed, and he
resurrected himself as a respected environmentalist.
Carper, who did remarry, eventually acknowledged in an
interview while he was the governor, "Did I slap my wife
20 years ago? Yes. Do I regret it? Yes. Would I do it
again? No."

Since then, Carper has fended off other attacks.

There was Danny Rappa, a plumbing contractor and
shady political operator, who wanted to get Carper as a
vengeful payback after Carper drove Rappa and his crowd
out of the Democratic Party structure. Rappa went after
Carper in the 1990 congressional primary, got trounced
9-1, and exited by grumbling, "I've lived through
Stalinism, Nazism, and I'm certain I'll live through
Carperism."

There was also something of a reprise of the
congressional race against Evans, as Carper was running
for re-election as governor in 1996 against Janet
Rzewnicki, the Republican state treasurer.

This time it was accusations about Martha Carper, his
wife, going to an emergency room, a victim of spousal
abuse, and filing for divorce.

Tom Carper took to carrying around a Bible, ready
with the passage about loving thine enemies. Martha
Carper, an international executive with DuPont, went
solo with a dramatic press conference to refute
everything and declare, "I love my husband, and he loves
me."

Rzewnicki was suspected of being behind it but never
owned up to it. She lost in a landslide.

Now there is Pires, running on the Independent Party
of Delaware with as wild a campaign as people might
expect from the owner of the Bottle & Cork, the
boisterous nightspot in Dewey Beach.

Pires has slammed Carper's character -- "Delaware is
the most corrupt state in the union, and Senator Carper
is the most corrupt in our 200-year history" -- and
asserted that Carper's health, both physically and
emotionally, is so bad it will make him resign if
re-elected.

Carper joked about going to the Bottle & Cork and
doing a hundred pushups, and then he really did get up
on a table at a Democratic political dinner in Felton
and do 30 of them. Otherwise, he has been rocketing
around the state as usual, letting his pace do the
talking, and matter-of-factly suggesting that Washington
needs bridge-builders, not more bomb throwers.

If Carper has become used to toxic charges, the state
still is not.

"This has turned out to be a more 'robust' Senate
race than I expected. Independent Alex Pires injected an
aggressive and churlish note into the campaign
inconsistent with the state's usual campaign norms,"
said Joe Pika, a political scientist at the University
of Delaware.

"Carper has been engaged and lively, showing that
health concerns are unwarranted. His appeal to
'bridge-building' is fully consistent with Delaware's
moderate tradition, and his self-control in the face of
repeated personal attacks provides a good example of the
patience and balance required of bridge-builders."

Delaware voters have yet to warm to minor-party
candidates, anyway.

The best showing in the last 10 years belonged to
Vivian Houghton, a lawyer who ran for attorney general
on the Green Party in 2002 after years of experience as
a Democratic operative. She managed 6 percent of the
vote.

True, an Independent candidate for attorney general
in 2010 did get 21 percent, but that result is skewed at
best, because the Republicans did not put up anyone
against Beau Biden, the better to discourage his
father-the-vice-president from doing a lot of
campaigning here and stirring up the Democratic vote.

FiveThirtyEight, the New York Times feature that
does statistical analysis of elections, projects
Carper with 66 percent of the vote and Kevin Wade, the
often overlooked Republican candidate, with 32 percent.
That would leave 2 percent for Pires.

In the exhaustion and ugliness of the campaign
against Evans in 1982, Carper took the time on Election
Day for breakfast with Ed Freel, his campaign manager
who later became his secretary of state, at Arner's
restaurant near New Castle.

Not that they are superstitious or anything, but
after the bilge of this campaign, it will be Arner's for
breakfast once again.